Number 2 Corn Walking: The Journey Continues

I was woken up this morning by a call from a friend proposing we go to the local Saturday farmer’s market. I was ready to go, eager to replenish my produce supplies for the week, when I received a second call reminding me that whoops it was Friday. So that didn’t go as planned, but it gave me time to think about how I’ve been doing regarding the revamping of my diet.

Yesterday was a decent example of my new and improved diet although most of the meals were planned by others. Breakfast consisted of an Odwalla smoothie (I was in a hurry) which has no preservatives and few ingredients aside from fruit and water. Lunch was a homemade, or schoolmade really, lentil soup that was delicious and fairly healthy. Aside from the tomato sauce from a can all the ingredients were more or less in their natural form. And although I don’t know where the veggies came from they were in season. An early dinner of pizza cooked in a clay oven completed my day. I failed to check the ingredients that made up the crust, I’m beginning to realize that constant vigilance is required to do things right, but the pesto sauce we made from scratch from locally grown basil and the cheese boasted few preservatives although again I can’t speak to the conditions the cows were raised in. Toppings were picked before our eyes, fresh tomatoes and zucchini grown organically on the “farm”, all in all it was a good ending to a good day.

There is much to discuss regarding this and any day of food, the fellowship, the convenience or the memories evoked are all viable topics. But I find myself focusing instead on the difficulty of creating a meal that is truly from scratch. In this day and age where brownies from scratch often involve a prepackaged mix have we forgotten how to get back to the basics or are we simply too tired, too busy, too modern to spend our days saving veggies for mirepoix and making stock? Isn’t that what cans of chicken broth are all about?

Every meal it seems concessions are given to make cooking easier. Sure the produce is local but the stock comes from factory farm chickens and genetically engineered veggies. It is hard to argue with critics like Adam Gopnik when they say that eating organic is just a fad when it is so easy to point out our failings. That doesn’t mean we should give up hope. Keep buying local it’s a start and maybe we will find a way to phase out the chemical concessions that we are making. Listening to Coldplay I realize they’re on to something when they say that, “nobody said it was easy, no one ever said it would be so hard” we just need to go back to the start.